in Moodle that this test must be run in Respondus Lockdown Browser? Close your regular web browser and double click on the desktop on the Moodle Lockdown Browser Icon:, then go to Moodle2 from in there.

in Respondus that “No more attempts are allowed”, but the student has not made any attempts yet and the quiz closing date is long in the past: contact the teacher to check whether the quiz needs updating.

Issues with Audio:

Students are advised to test the headsets before entering Respondus Lockdown browser assessments:

Start Audacity from the desktop, click record: if you say something, you must see something;

If yes: Do not rejoice too soon. Try inserting a character with the Respondus Lockdown Browser accent bar. If it only inserts a “?“, then repeat also, until this works also.

Long answer

The Respondus Lockdown browser blocks use of most key combinations, but not this default combination on Windows for switching keyboard languages (and it cannot – the user may need access to other language keyboards for the quiz!).

A user may inadvertently have switched the keyboard from the default (which works fine in most language quizzes in Respondus).

The Respondus Lockdown browser hides the language toolbar near the notification are in the lower right, so the change is not obvious, and also cannot be undone from the menu there.

The easiest way to hold a mock or proctor a written exam in the LRC is provide the students a printout of the exam. For larger classes preparing, and under some circumstances (writing impediment due to injury), providing the MS-Word file on a computer to the student would seem a more convenient solution.

However, the LRC prides itself in the large collection of MS-Office proofing tools it has installed and preconfigured – accessing which from within MS-Word could be construed as cheating during a writing exam. As a matter of fact, since MS-Word auto-detects language, under-waving of misspelled words and incorrect Grammar provides unsolicited and unavoidable extra help.

MS-Office proofing tools could be turned off by using a special MS-word template as the basis for the exam. Easier and quicker is using the SANAKO which can not only block internet access of the examined students, but also block use of entire applications like MS-Word.

Instead of in MS-Word, your students could write their responses in an application that is not part of the proofing tools infrastructure, like Notepad. Western language diacritics can easily be written in any application on LRC PCs thanks to US-International keyboard layout, and non-Western characters even easier than on paper.

For full security, the best environment for exams we can offer remains Respondus lockdown browser, integrated with Moodle, but this requires converting the exam to into a Moodle quiz (which Respondus has tools to facilitate). In certain cases, it might be easiest to create a “dummy” quiz with one long text input field, which your students could type everything in, without having access to any other resources (internet, proofing tools, chat, what not…). However, this quiz still would have to be in your Moodle course so that your students can access access, and their results get put into your gradebook.

Outside of Moodle – if you do not want to go down the Respondus-path – , you can rely on the SANAKO homework collection feature and my langlabemailer to receive the results.

Upon starting the quiz, Students are asked to select the right Moodle server (assuming Moodle2 is the right answer – how long will this step be necessary?)

When they are finished with the quiz, Students receive a combined “Ar required parameter is missing” (a link with “more information on this error” is offered underneath the red error message, but cannot be opened) and “Link is blocked” error

before they reach the “SAVED” screen with the “submit all and finish”button: Meaning their attempt was not saved and since it cannot be submitted, will be lost.

When logging in on a different computer, and starting the quiz in Lockdown browser, it tells students that the attempt is in progress,

upon continue, they have to start afresh (nothing has been saved).

This is on version from Dec 6 , 2012.

Workaround: Restarting the quiz on a different computer has been the best workaround I have seen so far.